The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 41

$1HlaMpfua Inquirer Home Entertainment Dance Section Daytime TV Grid D6 In Performance D2 Night-Owl TV Grid D6 Prime-Time TV Grid D5 Radio D6 Top 40 Video Rentals D7 "Afn. Doubtfire, starring Robin Williams, and "RoboCop 3" are just out on video. D7. High-tech gamesmanship reaches new levels with multimedia CD players. D7.

"The Creation," the Lakota have shaped their traditional culture into a theatrical experience. D2. Thursday, April 28, 1994 V'i. Secret Camus novel is a bestseller 1 yx'" 7 liiiiiiiiiiiiiiuwA liiitiiiiir'JjWiiitBiiiiiTii jiiiiiiirviiiii'-ittiwiiriiiitiii) fc.v;. me rniiaoeipnia inquirer ArniL daul By William Drozdiak THE WASHINGTON POST PARIS The sports car was moving too fast along the narrow country road to handle a tricky turn.

It skidded off the tarmac south of here and crashed into a tree, bringing a tragic and premature end, at the age of 46, to the life of Nobel Prize-winning author Albert Camus. For two hours on that drizzly January afternoon in 1960, police struggled to pull the writer's body free of the tangled wreckage. Then somebody noticed a briefcase lying in the mud a few yards away. It contained the initial draft of an autobiographical novel that would remain a secret family heirloom for 34 years. Now, after endless wrangling among family and friends over whether the manuscript would hurt or enhance the writer's reputation, the novel is a secret no longer.

Catherine Camus, a 48-year-old lawyer entrusted upon her mother's death in 1980 with her father's estate, has consented to publish the 144 pages of densely handwritten text that had become Camus' private obsession in the final days of his life. To her surprise and that of many French literary critics, The First Man, Camus' incomplete fourth novel, has soared to the top of France's bestseller list within two weeks of publication. It is already in its second printing, and a bidding war over translation rights has broken out among publishers from 16 countries. Camus' exploration of alienation themes and his austere brand of prose were immortalized in The Stranger, an enormously successful first book that became the most popular French novel of the century and a universal literary emblem for rebellious youths. His other two novels confirmed his stature as a thinking man for the masses: The Plague offered an allegory of the German invasion, and The Fall delved into the realm of nihilism.

On the strength of those three books, Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. But The First Man is a striking departure from his previous works. It was conceived as a drama about a poor family that gets caught up in See CAMUS on D4 "A movie like this could have commercial appeal' Ray Liotta says dryly of the macho "No Escape." He was at the Four Seasons to talk it up, By Carrie Rickey INQUIRER MOVIE CRITIC ot for Ray Liotta the misterioso language of how an actor inhabits a character. The man with the otherworldly eyes explains his profession in words as clear as his laser-blues: An Actor, not a gfrff regards it with a lust that most actors reserve for their female co-stars. The pride of Union, N.J., has been on the cusp of stardom since his stunning film debut as Melanie Griffith's unhinged spouse in Something Wild (1986).

In the next six years, he would essay five very different characters, among them the gentle intern who cares for his slow-witted twin in Dominick Eugene (1988), a spectral Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams (1989), the wiseguy-turned-inform-ant in GoodFellas (1990) and the cop fixated on Madeline Stowe in Unlawful Entry (1992). Liotta can do icon, he can do sociopath, he can do regular guy. What he can't do, as they say in the biz, is "open" a movie. Meaning that, unlike Harrison Ford, Liotta's name in the credits isn't enough to guarantee an audience. Once there, though, moviegoers respond to the melancholy edge and soft-spoken intensity Liotta brings to his parts.

He possesses an actor's range rather than a star's specialty. So it wouldn't be accurate to say that stardom has See LIOTTA on D3 "Acting is a child's game played with children's rules." And portraying a murderous Marine sentenced to a maximum-security island was "the ultimate in make-believe," says the star of the futuristic prison-break film No Escape, which opens tomorrow. "It reminded me of being in the back yard with toy guns." In this satisfying action-fantasy Liotta plays Robbins, a tough who eats bullets for breakfast and wardens for lunch. But in life, meaning the personal-appearance tour that's taken the 39-year-old to so many cities he feels like a political candidate, the morning meal is a cheeseburger, medium rare, at one of Philadelphia's four-star hostelries. Inhaling the perfume of his sizzling meal, he Ray Liotta can't light up a marquee, but he can illuminate a part.

He plays them sweet and sullen, tender and tough as with the murderous Marine in "No Escape, opening tomorrow. Today's Walk of Fame honorees include 2 Oak Ridge Boys Just a couple of Philly-area country boys Philly-born and Greenwich Village-bred Cliff Eberhardt, stops by John Peter's In New Hope at 9 p.m. Tickets: $8. (215-862-5981.) It is rare we mention events at high schools, but there is one tonight that especially catches our eye and ear. Jazz great Maynard Ferguson and his Big Bop Nouveau Band play at Bensalem High School at 7:30.

They'll also be jamming some with the school's award-winning jazz ensemble. Tickets: $12. (215-752-1196.) Going Out By Terry Bitman There's a hot time for country music lovers tonight as the "Marty Party," led by Grammy-winner Marty Stuart, gets it on at the Valley Forge Music Fair in Devon at 8. Joining the popular Stuart are the Western swing group Asleep at the Wheel and cutting-edge country singer Neal McCoy. The program is part of a series of concerts presented by radio station WXTU-FM.

Partv hearty! Tickets: $25. (610-644-5000.) poser and lyricist Joseph Burke, the late classical composer Vincent Persichetti and the late saxophone player-bandleader Charlie Ventura. The Oak Ridge Boys' decade-plus of country hitmaking peaked with 1981's "Elvira," a massive hit that sold more than 2 million copies and had the veteran quartet filling hockey arenas years before the current country explosion. Bonsall grew up in the Harrowgate section of See OAK on D2 least the Philadelphia area. These days, Bonsall and Sterban, half of the Oak Ridge Boys, live in Hendersonville, outside Nashville.

But today they'll be back in town to see their names unveiled on the Philadelphia Music Alliance's Walk of Fame along South Broad Street, and to be honored at the PmA's gala tonight along with pop legend Phil Spector, great Solomon Burke, vocalist-pianist Nina Simone, soul group the Stylis-tics, gospel singer Marion Williams, late com By Dan DeLuca INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Joe Bonsall and Richard Sterban are part of a country-music institution originally known as the Georgia Clodhoppers. They grew up singing Southern gospel and made it big in Nashville with a 70s brand of crossover country that made a fan of George Bush, who brought them along on campaign swings through the South. So, of course, they're from Philadelphia. Or at mLmmmm The Oak Ridge Boys (from left): Joe Bonsall, Duane Allen, Steve Sanders and Richard Sterban. Bonsall grew up in Philadelphia's Harrowgate section, while Sterban grew up in Collingswood.

Mozart's comic opera The Marriage of Figaro is staged tonight and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. by the Curtis Institute of Music Opera Theatre at the Haverford School's Centennial Hall. Tickets: $15. (215-893-7902. The Philadelphia Dance Projects' series of performances by local artists gets started with "Spirits in the Dark" by Homer Jackson and includes Cynthia Howard Jones, Richard Jordan and Rennie HarrisPure Movement at the Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St.

Shows at 8 tonight through Saturday. Tickets: $5. (215-567-0670.) Same time, same nights, the Pennsylvania Dance Theater and Philadanco II perform for the start of the City Dances '94 series at the WHYY Forum Theater, 150 N. Sixth St. Tickets: $15.

(215-567-0670.) I) One of the great street-corner vocalizers, The Duprees You "You Belong to Me," "My Own True harmonize at 9 and 11 p.m. at Legends in the Stadium Holiday Inn, 10th and Packer. WOGL-FM disc jockey Bob Pantano hosts. Cover: $10. (215-755-9500.) Speaking of oldies, there's Jesse Colin Young, whose folk-rock career goes back some 30 years and includes being a significant part of the Youngbloods, performers of the 1969 gold-record Get Together.

With his first' album in five years out, Young plays the Tin Angel, 20 S. Second St. at 7:30 and 10 p.m.. Tickets: $15. (215-928-0770.) Another familiar folk voice, 'At iv I r- ili-n-l-l-nf 1 -i" 1Tfr-nin-miTmnn-iTTiTTrTnHTTrimiHlilil v..